Agricultural lands in Kimball County are receiving new valuations as a result of recent soil sampling and mapping work. The county participated in this program along with South Platte Natural Resource District and the Federal Government.New Global Positioning System technology played a big part in the new valuation. The result is a “smoother” map of soil types.  There are no paper copies of the new soil survey map. It is available only on the internet.The new valuations of ag land going out to property owners on June 1 will be based on the new soil map and recent ag land sales.The previous soil map for Kimball County was based on soil sampling and mapping done in 1959. Many crop price fluctuations, farming and ranching techniques, weather and erosion events, soil analysis, mapping processes and economic events have occurred since then.The general finding from the recent survey is that Kimball County ag land is generally of poorer quality than shown by the 1959 survey. Does that mean the valuation will go down?The answer is - maybe.The new value is not based on simply dollars per acre. It is based on dollars per acre of the several soil types as based on ag land sales in each of four control areas.County Assessor Alice Ryschon says the land area of the county is divided into four control areas of unequal size that roughly correspond to the dominate soil type. The better quality land is generally in the northeast part of the county and the poorer land is in the extreme southern part and an enlarged southwestern quadrant. Ag land sale data for each of the four control areas has been accumulated for the past three years. The total soil type area for each of the basic land types is then calculated for each property using the GPS data. Then, using the sale price for that property, the value of each of the soil types on that property is calculated. And by doing the same type calculation for each property sold and adding them up, an average value for each type of soil is calculated and used as the basis for valuation of each farm and ranch property in the control area.What could and will happen in many instances is that the land contained in a property is  now found to be of poorer soil quality than shown by the 1959 survey.  But because farm sales in that control area have gone at high prices, the value of the poorer land is driven up, even though the new soil map may show the property has more acres of poorer land than was shown on the 1959 survey maps.Of course the opposite can happen. The new survey may show so much more poor quality land than did the 1959 survey, that the valuation does indeed go down.That means the property taxes could go down on that particular property.Information available in the County Assessors office at the moment shows that the value of  the poorer rankings of CRP land and grassland have gone up in value all over the county.The value of irrigated land has also gone up, particularly in the northeast and northwest control areas.The basic soil types of Rosebud, Alliance and Canyon soil remain unchanged. The basic land uses of irrigated cropland, dry cropland, grassland and CRP lands also remain unchanged. There has been considerable change in the sub-categories of each.Ryschon says the tabulation of the county’s new ag land valuation is not sufficiently complete at the moment to tell how many valuations went up and how many went down.The valuations are based on 33 sales in the southwest and extreme south control area (1), 22 sales in the southeast control area (2), 23 sales in the northwest control area (3) and 8 sales in the northeast control area (4). To throw another level of complexity into the problem, the nomenclature of soil coding for mapping and classification has also changed since the 1959 survey.What it seems to boil down to is this. The maps and soil type categories may change, the land be called poorer or richer for crop or grassland use, crop prices go up and down - the ag land value is based on actual sales and soil type. And as long as ag land sale prices go up, so will the ag land valuations.A recent listing found in Cornhusker Economics (UNL-Lincoln Extension 3/25/09) showed the 11 county  Panhandle area to have the lowest average dollar perag land acre value by far in the state. The statewide average is $1,424/acre while the Panhandle area value averages $460/acre.Ryschon said she will be happy to show ag land property owners the particulars on their property once the valuations are in the mail and all data is available.